


The Devil Wears Kevlar

by bonzai_bunny



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Bruce Wayne is Batman, Gen, One Shot, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-28 23:33:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15717351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonzai_bunny/pseuds/bonzai_bunny
Summary: Life isn't always easy being Bruce Wayne's personal assistant.





	The Devil Wears Kevlar

When Holly Ackerman moved to Gotham City, she had planned to pursue a career in fashion design. She had graduated with a 4.0 from Howard U and had the hopes and dreams of her parents on her shoulders.

(“My baby’s so creative,” her mama used to say when introducing her to new people. It embarrassed Holly but it didn’t stop the glowing feeling in her chest and the hope that maybe she was destined for greater things.)

She chose Gotham over Metropolis because the Gothic architecture inspired her. She knew it was dangerous, but so was where she grew up. She was never going to get anywhere in life without taking chances.

Holly did not, however, expect to end up as Bruce Wayne’s personal assistant. She knew that when she got to Gotham that she would have to get a job in another field until she got enough money to open a studio of her own, but one thing led to another and now her office was a door away from one of the richest men in the world. When she got the job, she had expected something like _The Devil Wears Prada_ , and dressed her best to impress.

She did not imagine…this. So far, being Bruce Wayne’s personal assistant was easier than what she was being paid for. Her daily schedule mostly consisted of:

  * Checking emails and making/taking calls
  * Giving important information to Bruce Wayne
  * Also giving important information to people below Bruce Wayne because it was about a 50/50 chance he would actually do something at his own company on any given day.  
  * Making sure she knew what his schedule was.



The duality of the man who signed her paycheck every month was such that she had classified him into two moods: Business Bruce and Party Bruce.

She didn’t think either of them knew her name.

When it was a Business Bruce day, Holly made sure she was every bit the role that she had been hired for. She made sure he had coffee. She managed to get him to sign important documents, attend meetings, and even felt a little sorry for him when he walked out of his office at the end of the day looking bone tired.

When it was a Party Bruce day, Holly mostly just passed off the work that could be passed off to someone else and spent her day on Instagram and Snapchat. When he showed up--if he showed up--he was often drunk. There probably had been a party the night before. Sometimes he actually showed up with his ‘guests’ from the previous night to ‘show’ them his office. The first time that happened and Holly heard the repeated banging of furniture against the wall, she learned never to leave home without her headphones ever again.

She drew the line at cleaning up after him.

Party Bruce and Business Bruce did not seem like the same person. Holly sometimes amused herself by wondering if they were twins or clones. Maybe a party demon possessed her boss every other week or so. Hey, she lived in a world where there was a flying alien demigod helping with natural disasters--anything was possible. She was never sure if she would come to terms with her deeply weird boss.

Holly very rarely accompanied Bruce Wayne outside of the office, but when she did it was almost certainly so she could babysit him. She was pretty sure attending to him at WE functions where alcohol was served was not in her contract. She was not bougie enough for this. At least Wayne never hit on her.

(Holly strongly suspected of her not being his type, aka a supermodel. She had wide hips and a round face and far too much natural hair to be ‘fashionable’ for the runway.)

She thought she had seen the worst WE functions had to offer. She had seen her boss give half-speeches/half-self-congratulatory hand jobs. The types of speeches that everyone around her found charming when all she saw was utter bullshit. She had seen the many, many women that hung around Wayne like flies. She had fought her way through to get the business ties that Wayne was supposed to be courting but was too drunk to handle. She had to hold her own and remain professional in a very rich, very white environment. Somehow, throughout all of this, she had forgotten that this was Gotham and things could always get worse.

\--

Holly was frozen in place when all the windows at this WE party blew out. She saw masked men climbing in from ropes and heard the panicked screams of Gotham’s elite, but her feet were rooted to the ground. Her mind screamed at her to do all the things her daddy told her--hit the ground when you hear shooting, pretend to be dead--but there was a disconnect between her rapidly beating heart and her legs.

She noticed too late that one of the thugs was coming towards her and she remembered her second year Christmas present from Wayne, a pair of diamond earrings that cost more than anything she owned.

The masked man reached towards Holly and she braced herself for a hit that didn’t come. Wayne grabbed the man’s wrist, the man screamed, and Wayne did some magic to take the gun out of his hand and knock him to the ground, unconscious.

Holly stared at her boss like he had grown a second head. He looked serious and focused, not at all like the drunk who had been wearing on her nerves all evening.

“Go, the door’s that way,” he said in a low voice and somehow it unrooted Holly. She backed away and ran as fast as she could in her heels.

It was only later she heard from the people who had been trapped inside that the Batman had shown up and apprehended the criminals.

\--

Wayne didn’t show up to work the following Monday. Not that Holly blamed him. She questioned her own decision to show up. She had barely slept over the weekend, reliving that evening over and over. If it wasn’t for her boss, she might be dead. Every time she thought about how she just froze there, unable to do anything, it felt like her stomach was made of lead. Work would help get it off her mind, she was sure.

Since her boss wasn’t here, she delivered his work around to the people he paid to run the company when he wasn’t there. She did some work herself and seriously considered getting a stiff drink during lunch.

Holly had been looking into some financial records (Seriously, _none_ of this was supposed to be her job) from a recent deal when she started noticing some inconsistencies. It appeared that although WE put aside money for a technologies merger, there was more money put aside than what WE spent on the merger. That money was never put back.

Where did that money go? Holly couldn’t have been the only one who noticed this, right? True, she had access to Bruce Wayne’s personal files, but this reeked of corruption. Was there a cover up?

She dug deeper and found more missing money. Some of it appeared to be going to an unlisted defense contract (and boy that was terrifying), some of it appeared to be spread around in offshore accounts that regularly paid out to charities. Which was…...odd.

Holly sometimes considered her boss to be an idiot, but she had never pictured him to be corrupt. Maybe that was naive of her. He _was_ the CEO of a multinational corporation. Did he know about this? Was he directly responsible?

Holly saved all the info she found on a flashdrive and hid it in her purse. She would get to the bottom of this. All the money in the world wasn’t worth a job that contributed to hurting people.

\--

Bruce Wayne came into work the next day and he was Party Bruce. Gone was the suddenly serious man from last Saturday, the one who had fought to protect her. He came into her office, even though he had no business being there, and leaned heavily against her desk.

“Good morning, Hailey.”

“It’s Holly,” she corrected. “And it’s 10pm.”

Wayne waved his hand as though it was no concern. “Still morning.”

Holly bit the inside of her lip to prevent from saying something nasty. This man was still her boss, no matter how inept he appeared to be.

“I didn’t get to see you after the party this weekend. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she grit out. “I’m fine.” She just had to keep marking changes to the language in this document for his approval, she didn’t need to look at him or think about the potentially illegal things he was doing that kept her up at night.

“You don’t look fine. You know, you’d be prettier if you smiled more.”  

She couldn’t take this. She turned her chair to face him fully and stared him in his blandly appeasing eyes.

“Mr. Wayne, are you committing tax evasion?”

That startled him enough to get off her desk. “What?”

“Or money laundering? I didn’t want it to come out like this, but I noticed some inconsistencies on our books yesterday and money going to places that it shouldn’t be.”

Wayne’s shoulders stiffened but he still slapped on a lazy smile. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. I rarely look at the books myself. But if there’s a problem, I’ll get our accountants to take a look.”

Wayne left, and Holly glared at him suspiciously the whole time.

\--

The next day Business Bruce was back, and he kept her busy. If he thought that would keep her from snooping, he was wrong. When he asked for his second coffee of the day, she took a detour to the accounting department and used her administrative status to check what the books looked like from the technology merger. It looked clean, down there. Which meant that either he really did get it fixed or there was more than one set of books.

When she came back to her office, she logged in as Wayne and checked the accounts there. And there was indeed an entirely separate set of numbers.

_Son of a bitch._

\--

Holly wasn’t sure what to do. Should she go to the police? She had a hard time believing that anyone would believe her testimony over Bruce Wayne’s. His family built half of Gotham and she was a nobody. Not only that but she was 1. Black, 2. From a poor family, and 3. From a rough neighborhood.

Holly was sure she could have all the evidence in the world and still be laughed out of court. This whole situation was giving her a bad feeling in her gut.

On Thursday, she said nothing to Wayne and went to get drinks before going home. She knew that she shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach and it was the middle of the week, but the stress was getting to her. The question she kept turning over and over in her head was, should she risk losing her job for what could be nothing?

Ugh.

Wayne was a vapid idiot, but she still never pictured malevolence in him. He had never yelled at her, even when she was still figuring her way around and dropped coffee more than once. He didn’t make her deal with his social life outside of work functions. She wasn’t in charge of organizing his every waking moment like some PAs she knew. He had even let her go home early a few times because of unbearable cramps. Hell, she had a month of vacation time she could use whenever and he had given her over a thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry. He had also saved her life.

After two beers and a shot of whiskey, Holly was on her way home. She was warm from the alcohol and more than a little tipsy, but she felt better than she had in a week. Fuck Bruce Wayne, she thought. Fuck this whole situation.

She hummed to herself as she crossed the sidewalk and didn’t see the figure approach her from the side. She was grabbed by her jacket into an alleyway and screamed before the man put his hand around her mouth.

“Make another noise and I’ll slit your fucking throat,” he hissed.

Holly felt the metal of a knife against her neck and she didn’t need to be told twice. She nodded, and the man let go of her mouth.

“Now give me your purse.”

Holly dropped her purse to the ground and prepared to run, when a figure of darkness descended into the alleyway. She stared at him stupidly in awe as he knocked the knife away from the robber and punched him hard enough that the robber fell flat to the ground.

It was one thing knowing the Batman existed, it was another thing entirely to see him in person.

She continued to stare at him stupidly as he picked her purse up off the ground and handed it to her. She was about to give her thanks (stutter something uncool like, “Thanks Mr. Batman!”) when he turned his head slightly to the side and solidly blocked her body with his. The sound of the gunshot was splintering.

Batman’s jerk forward was the only indication that he had been hit. Holly wanted to scream for help but before she could, Batman stood up straighter and threw a batarang at the robber and knocked the gun out of his hand. This was swiftly followed by a knee to the chin and Holly doubted he would get up this time.

Holly had so many questions but was caught off guard by the Batman turning around and asking, “Are you okay?” in a deep gravelly voice.

“Uh--yeah,” she stammered. “Are you?”

Batman didn’t answer, although everything she knew about him indicated that he wasn’t exactly chatty. He simply fired a grappling hook up into the air and left as silently as he had arrived. Holly tracked him over the building and then he was gone. She stood there in shock for a long time, trying to process what had just happened until she heard sirens approaching. She took off and decided that that she wasn’t going to stick around. Holly was tired and didn’t feel like experiencing the gentle harassment of the GCPD, even if she had technically been the victim of a crime.

It was only in the morning she realized that her flashdrive was gone.

\---

Holly was freaking out. She couldn’t believe that she had misplaced the flashdrive. All that evidence was gone. Had she left it at the bar? At her desk? When she arrived into work she searched through every drawer twice and even asked about the lost and found. It was lucky that Bruce didn’t show up that day, so she had more time to find her missing property. After work, she went back to the bar to see if it had fallen out of her purse, but if someone found it, they didn’t come forward.

What a shitty cherry on top of the shit-sundae that was her week. If she was going to get the word out about Wayne Enterprises’ misdeeds she would have to find the evidence again and Holly couldn’t help but think that it would be significantly harder this time.

\--

It took two weeks for Business Bruce to show up at work. Holly had peeked at the finances again, but it was all encrypted suddenly and she couldn’t help but thinking that wasn’t a coincidence. Through her own cunning (aka, she asked her cousin for help), she got the damning evidence back on a flashdrive again which she now hid in her bra. It took a long time to sort through it all, but it didn’t spell out nice things about whatever the hell Bruce Wayne was doing with extra company money.

The odd thing though, was that the money didn’t seem to be heading directly back to him. There were shell corporations inside shell corporations, but as far as she could tell, the money stayed out of Wayne’s hands directly. She couldn’t tell if it was some sort of cunning system that she couldn’t sift through, or if Wayne’s hands were truly clean. Was someone else taking money? Were they pulling a fast one over their boss? All this work and misdirection didn’t seem capable of a man who didn’t even know his own social security number.

Maybe she had this all wrong. Maybe Wayne really didn’t know what was going on and was being robbed under his nose. Either way, Holly was going to find out the truth. She was going to confront him and if things got shady, she would quit. It was about time she took her own path anyway. She had almost saved up enough to finally own her own studio and she had dreams to follow.

The following day, Holly was more nervous than she ever remembered being. Business Bruce didn’t acknowledge her when he came in, but he asked for a coffee about ten minutes after arriving. Holly clenched her fists and took a deep breath. What was the worst thing that could happen, losing her job? She was sure she could dig up some prospects from working Bruce’s business deals for him.

So, about twenty minutes after getting him his morning coffee she gathered her strength and entered his office without knocking. Almost immediately, Holly forgot what she was about to say.

Wayne was sitting on his couch, shirt open, apparently in the middle of changing bandages for a wound on his abdomen. Beyond that, Holly could see deep bruises and old scars that sent her mind racing through the possibilities of what could have caused them.

“Mr. Wayne?”

Bruce finished dressing his wound quickly and buttoned up his shirt. He sounded oddly stern when he said,

“I didn’t tell you to come in here.”

“Are you okay?” Holly asked out of genuine concerned.

“I’m fine,” he said flippantly. “I got mugged, the police will deal with it.”

And it wasn’t her business, but she still asked, “You got all of those scars from being mugged?”

She may have been poking the bear a little bit, but things weren’t adding up. Wouldn’t it be all over the news of someone has high profile as her boss got mugged? Bruce stared at her, as though seeing her for the first time and answered,

“Yes. Now get back to your desk.”

“No, I--I came in here for a reason. To ask you something.”

Bruce put on his suit jacket and waved his hand as if to say, ‘Go ahead.’

“I want you to be completely honest with me. Are you stealing money from Wayne Enterprises?”

Bruce’s face went carefully blank and he answered, “No.”

“Okay, then why is there so much missing money? And don’t you dare say that you don’t know about it because your books are different than accounting’s.”

Bruce sighed and leaned back against his couch. “Holly...I promise you that I will get to the bottom of this. Until then, you should stay out of it and do the job I’m paying you for.”

That struck a nerve. Holly crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at her boss. “The job you’re paying me for? You mean doing _your_ job?”

Bruce raised a placating hand. “Holly--”

“No, I’m tired of this bullshit--all of it! Every day you come in here acting like you’ve never touched a memo in your life but then, when it counts, you’re suddenly competent? You have money going from WE to god knows where and, somehow, none of it traces back to you. And-and then, you come in here looking like you’re a part of a fight club or some shit and since when have you known my name?

Bruce stood up. “Holly, please understand--”

“No!” Holly interrupted, “I don’t want to hear anything from you unless it’s the truth. Are you compromised? Does the mob have something on you? Is Wayne money dirty?”

“No,” Bruce answered vehemently. “I have nothing to do with the mob nor does Wayne Enterprises. Please believe me when I say that none of this is what you think this is and none of it is bad. Your heart is in the right place, but you’re in over your head.”

Holly pulled the flashdrive out of her bra and felt a surge of power at the brief look of fear that crossed Bruce Wayne’s face.

“None of that was an answer, Mr. Wayne. I need you to know if we’re doing something shady...if we’re doing something that hurts other people, I can’t be a part of this. I don’t want to have to go to the police, but I will if I don’t get a straightforward answer.”

Bruce sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, and Holly knew that she had him cornered. After a moment he looked up again and asked, “You really want to know the truth?”

Holly nodded and squeezed the flashdrive in her hand. “Yes.”

It looked like it pained him to say what he was about to say next, but out of all things, she was not expecting to hear:

“I’m Batman.”

Holly blinked, unsure if she heard correctly. “I’m sorry?”

“I’m Batman.”

Holly rolled her eyes. “I’m being serious, Mr. Wayne.”

“So am I. Think about what you know.”

Holly searched her memory for any time her boss seemed especially Batman-esque, but she could mostly remember inane drunk conversations. But then--wait a minute. Bruce had disarmed that robber during the WE event and saved her life. She had assumed that her boss had taken self-defense classes or something but still, the thought of Brucie Wayne being Batman was laughable at best. Holly chewed on her lip and thought about her only encounter with the Bat.

“Okay, say that I believe you. What’s something only Batman would know?”

“You got mugged a little over two weeks ago. I stopped your mugger and got shot in the gut.”

Bruce gestured to his abdomen where the wound was, and Holly was stunned into silence. After a beat she managed to whisper,

“Holy shit, you’re Batman.”

Bruce walked over to her and plucked the flashdrive out of her hand and Holly was still so shocked she made no attempt to stop him. He very quickly snapped it in half.

“I hope you can appreciate how...sensitive this is and how important it is that this information doesn’t get out.”

Holly recovered enough to ask, “But how? I mean, no offense, Mr. Wayne, but you’re hardly World’s Greatest Detective material.”

Bruce shrugged. “It’s an act. Nobody suspects me if they think I can’t even tie my shoelaces.”

Now that she was looking, there was a marked difference to Bruce compared to how she normally saw him. Gone was the bland smile and loose posture. He looked rigid and stern and much more like the Batman than he ever had. Slowly the wheels were turning in her head.

“So, your son, Dick Grayson. He was the first Robin?”

“Yes.”

“What about that money? Is it going to you?”

“It’s mostly split between charities the Wayne Foundation can’t or won’t sponsor and the Justice League. I use my own inheritance to pay for the Batman stuff.”

Holly hadn’t even considered the League; her mind was being blown by the second. “Is that what that defense contract is?”

“Yes. Does that answer all of your questions?”

Holly chewed her lip again and thought. “Who else knows about this?”

“Aside from you, there’s Lucius Fox, my butler, my father’s old colleague, and a handful of heroes. I like to keep the circle small as possible.”

She was amazed that she was now a part of that group. Holly had expected to walk away today with information, but this wasn’t the type of information she had bargained for. Suddenly she realized something:

“Did you take my other flashdrive?”

“Yes. I apologize,” Bruce said but didn’t sound remotely sorry. “You revealed a blind spot and I couldn’t let you leave with that information.”

Holly wanted to be angry at him, to be furious at all the grief that this man had caused her all in the name of an act, but he had also saved her life twice. All she could manage was a frustrated grumble.

“God, you’re an asshole.”

Bruce’s lips quirked into an almost smile. “So I’ve been told.”

“So all of those parties where you were too drunk to do your job?”

This time Bruce did look apologetic. “An act. I rarely drink in public.”

Holly almost called him an asshole again but figured she was probably pushing it and sighed. “So, what now?”

“Well, hopefully, you choose to keep everything a secret and we go back to being boss and employee and never discuss this again.”

Holly paused, curious, and asked, “So what would happen if I tried to go public with the information?”

“I have ways of discrediting you, of making you reconsider,” Bruce replied and did so in such an indifferent tone, Holly shivered. She could believe this guy spent his nights beating up people and absolutely did not want to get on his bad side.

“I think I’ll pass on that.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Holly was about to head back to her own office when she realized that there was something she could do about this information.

“I’ll keep your secret on one condition.”

Bruce raised both of his eyebrows. “Which is?”

She was pushing her luck here but took a deep breath and demanded, “Help me meet Superman.”

Bruce looked taken aback for a moment before he started laughing. It wasn’t the high, tipsy giggle of Brucie but more of a short, clipped bark in a slightly awkward way that indicated he didn’t laugh sincerely very often.

“Alright, deal.”

Holly nodded, elated that she was going to meet _Superman_ , and turned back to leave his office when he said, “Thank you, Holly. For all that you’ve done for me.”

Feeling a little bit cheeky and emboldened she responded, “You’re welcome, Bruce,” and finally left.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is over 4k??? for some reason?? I had this idea a loong time ago but didn't finish writing it until recently. Hope you liked it and comment!


End file.
